African WildLife Foundation

The African Wildlife Foundation, originally the African Wildlife Leadership Foundation, is a charitable organization with worldwide support founded in 1961.

“The African Wildlife Foundation, together with the people of Africa, works to ensure the wildlife and wild lands of Africa will endure forever.”

The AWF operates in 3 unique but overlapping areas, based on the principle that none of these elements can be separated from the others: Conserving Wildlife, Protecting Land, and Empowering People.

The Foundation expresses this unified aim as follows:

“AWF believes that a continent as unique as Africa requires a unique approach to conservation. It is simply not enough to develop initiatives to protect single species or conserve individual pieces of land. We must look at the whole picture. How do people and wildlife live together and how do they clash? How will the well-being of local people be affected by conservation efforts?

“At AWF we approach all of our work at the “landscape level” – that is to say, we look at large landscapes (we have identified eight of these areas to date). Within these landscapes, we implement a variety of efforts that conserve land, protect species and empower people.”

In 1963, AWF partnered in the foundation of the College of African Wildlife Management (Mweka), which has trained over 4,000 wildlife managers from 28 African countries and 18 non-African countries.

Some species are being brought back from the edge of extinction due to the Foundation’s efforts. This decade has seen encouraging studies on population growth among the elephant, rhinoceros and mountain gorilla populations.

Economic integration means working with local communities to create commercially successful operations that conserve wildlife and habitat while improving the livelihoods of people. Conservation tourism and agriculture are two of the more successful areas for new locally owned businesses.

In 1998, to further the goals of preserving Africa’s natural heritage, the AWF identified 8 key landscapes, the African Heartlands, of which 2 (Kilimanjaro and Maasai Steppe) are part of the Serengeti.

It is with deep gratitude for their commitment and dedication to the wildlife and wild lands of Africa, that a percentage of each sale of Surviving Your Serengeti book is donated to the AWF.